Conscious Cup Coffee Roasters

Freshly Roasted Tastes Better

Premium Arabica coffees from around the world are roasted fresh in small batches in our cafe and are served and delivered fresh from the roaster.

Dropping a roast at Conscious Cup

Roasted coffees begin to noticeably lose flavor after a month. Ground coffees lose 50% of flavor in just two hours. (Some grocery store brands, which use low grade robusta beans, inject gas additives to give you that "fresh" aroma.)

Groceries are told their coffee has a 12-month shelf life. How old is the coffee when you buy it?

Really, it's simply an issue of organic chemistry. The elements of the coffee bean that give it a distinguished flavor and aroma are also the most volatile. Roasting begins a slow and steady breakdown. Grinding accelerates the breakdown of these volatile but most desirable flavor elements of coffee.

In our Cafe, our coffees are roasted and then ground as needed to extract a perfect espresso shot or to brew coffee. We trust that you will find our drinks just taste far better.

Conscious Cup uses a state-of-the-art gourmet, small-batch roaster. Small-batch roasting is gentler on the beans and avoids taint, a burning or scalding when beans in large-batches roll for too long against the hot roasting drum.

We select premium Arabica bean coffee from the finest growers in the world. Read more about our Awake & Aware, Life is Fair™ buying practices.

Roast Preferences

Taste preferences determine a "good" roast and "dark" roast should not be equated in and of itself with "good."

Our coffees are profile roasted. This means we seek to highlight the best flavor characteristics of each bean. Sumatra coffees typicallyl require a very dark roast, the oils shine on the surface and you experience a deeply rich body and chocolate earthiness. Roast too dark and the oils disappear and and you begin to taste the char of the roast and not the flavor of the bean. Cup sampling of many coffees with our importer helps determine the roast level that brings out the best in any bean.

Consider that regional preferences for roast levels range from very dark (black and oily) in Southern Italy to a medium roast (milk chocolate in color) in Northern Italy. In the U.S., a West Coast style emphasizes darker roasts for drip coffee. Traditionally New England residents prefer a lighter roast (hence the "light city" description).

Popular roast descriptions include:

• Light city (New England) light cinnamon, light brown sour.
• City (American) medium brown sweet, slight sour.
• Full city high brown, shiny full-bodied, tangy.
• Viennese dark dark brown, shiny toasty, bittersweet.
• French heavy very dark brown, oily, bittersweet.
• Italian (Ice) very heavy extremely dark brown to very burnt, black, shiny, oily.